K233 and K234 Mozat's "Kiss my Ass" Canons MozartForum Articles

Dennis Pajot

In 1799 Constanze Mozart sent Breitkopf & Härtel several manuscripts including a list of "songs". Among this list of songs Item 21 reads "Three Canons Lek mich im Arsch". Constanze included a note saying she would be sending the Canons later and that their texts would have to be altered because they were "unruly". It is uncertain which canons she referred to but two were most likely--K231/382c, known by its incipit "Leck mich im Arsch" (Kiss my Ass) and K233/382e "Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schon sauber" (Kiss my ever so nice clean ass). The third was probably K234/384e "Bei der Hitz im Sommer ess ich" (In the heat of summer I eat). B & H published the 3 Canons with new texts: "Lasst froh uns seyn" (Lets be joyous), "Nichts labt mich mehr als Wien" (Nothing pleases me more than wine) and "Essen, Trinken, das erhalt den Leib" (Eating, drinking support love), only citing the first line of Mozart's original text. Not only these three, but also six other canons were published by B & H with new suitable texts. However the other six texts are known to us from Mozart autographs, these first 3 canon texts have been lost to us. However a recently found set of the "Oeuvres Complettes" of Mozart's from ca. 1804 gives all 9 original canon texts that B & H suppressed. The original texts are entered just below B & H's printed words.

Albert Dunning in the Mozart-Jahrbuch and again in his NMA volume has questioned the authenticity of these 3 "Leck mich im Arsch" canons. Then in 1988 Wolfgang Plath established the music of K233 and K234 is most likely to be attributed to Wenzel Trnka (1739-1791), having been published before 1800 in "XII Canons for 3 Voices Composer Sig. Wenceslao Trnka", and again later by Aloys Fuchs under Trnka's name. Michael Ochs in a 1991 Mozart-Jahrbuch article hypothesized that Breitkopf & Härtel received the Mozart canon autographs from Constanze Mozart and made in-house copies of them; then on these copies were written the substitute texts, with a few modifications in the music to accommodate B & H's new words. Even though this is very plausible, unfortunately there is no evidence of any in-house copies and no clue where the autographs went. Ochs reproduces the original text of Mozart's for the canons as follows:

K233 "Leck mire den A..recht schon, fein sauber lecke ihn, fein sauber lecke, leck mire den A...Das ist ein fettigs Begehren, nur gut mit Butter geschmiert, den das Lecken der Braten mein tagliches Thun. Drei lecken mehr als Zweie, nur her, machet die Prob' und leckt, leckt, leckt. Jeder leckt sein A...fur sich".

K234: "Beider Hitz im Sommer ess ich gerne Wurzl und Krauter auch Butter und Rettig; treibt furtreflich Wind und kuhlet mich ab, und kuhlet mich ab. Ich nehm Limonade, Mandelmilch, auch zu Zeiten Horner bier, auch zu Zeiten Horner Bier; das im heissen Somer nur, im Sommer nur. Ich fur mich in Eis gekuhlts Glas Wein, fur mich in Eis gekuhlts Glas Wein in Eis. Auch mein Glas gefrohrnes".

Remember Plath established most likely the music is by Trnka, but according to Ochs "we must nevertheless admit that the words have a definite Mozartean ring. Their appearance...leads one to speculate that Mozart fitted his own text to someone else's music, unlikely as that may seem. According to Plath, Trnka's canons originally had an Italian text (from Metastasio), and had been changed to the coarse German by someone else, and then later attributed to Mozart.

K231: Leck mich im A...g'schwindi, g'schwindi!Leck im A...mich g'schwindi. Leck mich, leck mich, g'schwindi/etc. etc. etc." A further possible "Leck mir Arsch" canon may be K559. the text "Difficile lectu mihi Mars" apparently makes fun of Johann Nepomuk Peyerl (a Bavarian tenor in Mozart's circle). According to an account by Gottfried Weber in 1824 one evening Mozart wrote out the nonsense Latin sounding words in the hope that Peyerl's accent would pronounce the words "Lectu mihi mars" as "leck du mich im Arse". When this happened the party would turn the page over and find the mocking canon K560a "O du eselhafter Peirel", which is indeed written on the back of the K559 autograph. However Dunning in NMA shows there is reason to doubt this account. This canon also has Mozart versions using the names "Martin" and "Jakob". The Breitkopf & Härtel set spoken of earlier uses the word Reitknecht, perhaps used by B & H to make a text more presentable.

Another of Mozart's humorous canons is K232/509a "Lieber Freistaedtler, Lieber Gaulimauli" written most likely in summer of 1787, where Mozart pokes fun at a student, Franz Jakob Freystadtler, whom he nicknamed "Gaulimauli" (horse-mouth) "Stachelschwein" (porcupine) and "Herr Lilienfeld (Mr. Lilyfield) in letters and a comedy sketched by himself. In my favorite Canon K561, Mozart says good night with an insult in five languages, and then ends by saying "Sleep tight, and stick your ass in your mouth". Again B & H made a complete re-texting for the canon.

Köchel had placed the "Leck mir Arsch" canons K231, 233 ,234 with the 1775 compositions, believing they fit well with Mozart's letters from his Salzburg years that used toilet language. In K3 Einstein moved them to Mozart's early Vienna years because of the "humorous social intercourse" which the texts reflect, renumbering them K382c,d and e. William Cowdery (1991) believes they might fit well with the similar obscene lyrics of the 1788 Canons. However Dunning pointed out that the earlier dated canons differ in their melodic flow from the Vienna Canons" of 1787 and 1788, even placing a slight doubt on their authenticity. Regarding the Canons K559 and K560a Dunn believes they may have been written as early as 1786, as Peyerl was still in Salzburg to at least mid December 1785; so the earliest Mozart could have met him in Vienna was at the very end of December 1785 and most likely 1786. Mozart then batch entered the 9 canons at one time in his work catalogue on September 2, 1788. However Alan Tyson's NMA volume of watermarks places the Peyerl canon on a type of paper Mozart purchased after his return from Prague in December 1787 and predominately used in 1788, including all pages of K550 and K551, Symphonies #40 and #41.

All the Canons discussed here are available (in the Breitkopf & Härtel re-texting) on the Philips Complete Mozart Edition, volume 23.